A gathering place for people fighting FATCA, FBAR and US citizenship-based taxation

Bizarre Stuff Happening

Something bizarre is happening at Maple Sandbox. We don’t think it’s the NSA, IRS or US Treasury checking us out.

Some of you may have noticed a delay in your comments appearing yesterday or today. For some reason, some comments went to moderation while others didn’t. There was no reason for that as we do not have anyone in moderation.

You somehow were caught up in a number of spam messages that also went to moderation.

Even weirder is I received a message from another person who comments here occasionally that she received requests to moderate. That is totally bizarre because she is not an administrator. Did anyone else receive a message like that?

In addition, for some reason, my links to the CRA information did not work and I cannot link directly to Don Whitley’s article or anything else.

Outraged in working on it, but it may be a while before she is able to fix it. She is at work now.

6 thoughts on “Bizarre Stuff Happening”

@Schubert – thanks for the IP address – it’s now blocked. (lookup shows it being in Vancouver)

Our hosting provider says that a server security setting got ‘turned on’, and that caused the spamming problem. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but things have settled down since they turned it back off.

How did it get turned on in the first place? I don’t know – maybe one of the spy agencies does?

Weird, I’ve got the same problem. My Primus Spam Report says I’ve got three quarantined messages from WordPress, all supposedly Sandbox posts awaiting moderation. I’m not a moderator on this site, just an author, so that’s rubbish.
Two emails from this morning, purportedly sent by aileenbobbitt@googlemail.com with a URL for hermosabeachrealty.com, contents gibberish. Other one from yesterday evening from hulda_brumbaugh@googlemail.com with a suspicious URL and content complementing me on my writing skills in a post that I put up in November 2012!

Maybe some hacker in China or with one of the USSA spy agencies is playing stupid games. I leave it to the real moderators to block both the above email addresses from this website, which is my recommendation FWIW.

Sender IPs are 64.69.82.170 for all three emails even though contents and IDs are different. Recommend blocking that IP from this website.

Please no one reading this attempt to use the emails or URLs or IPs, that might put your computer at risk. I’m publishing this information as my personal “name and shame” for these low-lifes. There is no legitimate reason I know of for this IP to be contacting me, never mind this website.

I had that happen this weekend. I got 2 e-mails saying there was a comment awaiting moderation.

I have had that happen before a few times, going back to over a year ago. I remember very clearly that those were real comments for a post that I had created. My status here is “author” (not an “editor” or “administrator”) but it seemed logical I got the message because I was the author of that particular post.

However, with the 2 this weekend, it was weird, now that you mention it. One was a spam The other one, there was no comment in moderation at all. But I didn’t think anything of it at the time, until I read this now.

I haven’t had any problems with Sandbox today as you described, and my post a few minutes ago went ahead OK.

Now that you mention it though, I have received today a couple of emails in my Junk Mail folder from Brock (not sure why, as I’ve never put that website in my junk list and never would) along the lines you’ve mentioned. Maybe I should pass this on to the moderators over there, something fishy may indeed be going on. Or not. But the coincidence is a little disturbing, I must say. Let’s see if this comment goes through.